Starting tomorrow, Susie Essman is starting her weekend run at Carolines on Broadway in New York City (tickets here). We’re excited, to say the least. So much so, I thought this would be an excellent excuse to roll out some interview outtakes I had in my pocket for the last few months.

On the second to last episode of this season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Essman’s character find herself in an odd position– literally. Next to her friend Larry, in a rush to a burning building, she ends up having an orgasm– a really good one. And it’s all thanks to Larry’s broken passenger car seat which has turned into a makeshift female sexual aid. In what seems like a countless number of unforgettable scenes from this season, this one arguably may be the most memorable. Let’s review shall we?

Before the season even started I chatted with Essman at the HBO offices in New York and I asked her about this scene, since it appeared in one of the three episodes the network distributed to press for review purposes. But understandably, Essman didn’t want to give away any spoilers. But since its aired now, I wanted to share with you her thoughts on the scene.

“We don’t want to give it away, Dylan. I know what scene you’re talking about,” she told me. “We can say that people will be seeing me in a certain way that only my husband has seen, and it’s not naked. That was a hard scene to shoot. That was last summer. It was a very hot day, as I recall, sitting in that car. I would say we probably did about 10 takes of that scene,” she says, explaining they were full takes!

“We had to do full takes because the car is moving and everybody is on a flat bed, and the camera men and the producers and directors, are on a flat bed following us. But I would say, you know, maybe it was eight; maybe it was 12, but I’d say around 10. We do a lot of takes of everything. It’s necessary because they need a lot of takes in editing because it’s improvised. It’s a 30-minute show, and because it’s improvised, they need to be able to cut a lot for time. You just don’t know – we don’t think about time when we’re doing a scene, we just do it. So we always need a lot of takes.”

About the Author

Dylan P. Gadino

Dylan is the founder and editor in chief of Laughspin. He launched Punchline Magazine in 2005 (which became Laughspin in the summer of 2011) with childhood friend Bill Bergmann. Dylan lives in northern New Jersey with his wife and two sons. He hopes the Shire is real.